:-)
It was the first-ever usage of what has become known as an "emoticon".
Happy 25th birthday Colon-Hyphen-Parenthesis!
You might remember a few days ago when I wrote here about how the atheist Rational Response Squad had apparently been targeted by a Christian organization. Creation Science Evangelism Ministries allegedly filed "false DMCA copyright requests" against the Rational Response Squad with YouTube, and YouTube subsequently yanked Rational Response Squad's account. But as you can see, it is now back up.
In the past few days since posting on this blog that I would "give the Rational Response Squad my full support in this matter", plenty of e-mail has come into my box about that. A lot of the sentiment is reflected in the comments made on the earlier post. And many people are really, really angry that I took up sides with a group of atheists on this issue. Especially in light of what, supposedly, Rational Response Squad has done in the past.
The first time that the Rational Response Squad ever appeared on my radar screen was during the weekend, when this affair with YouTube made news. I don't know what the Rational Response Squad has done before.
Saying that I'm supporting them in this matter does in no way certify or imply in the least bit that I'm somehow endorsing their attitudes and tactics in other matters.
But don't take that to mean that just because I do follow Christ, that it's supposed to mean that I automatically endorse "my side" in every situation, either.
This thing is for the Rational Response Squad to hash-out with Creation Science Evangelism Ministries. I don't have a dog in that hunt...
...although I do feel compelled to say this to Creation Science Evangelism Ministries: you guys aren't "getting" it at all. And these kinds of shenanigans aren't doing the ministry of Christ any favors. If anything, this enmity against the Rational Response Squad is hurting our cause, which is supposed to be one borne in love. I can't see that happening here at all.
Why did I, a Christian, lend my support to a group of atheists in this situation? Because it was the Christian thing to do. Nothing more and nothing less. If that doesn't satisfy you then maybe it'll please you to know that it was at least the American thing to do. As in the real America: the people that used to be able to disagree without feeling obligated to destroy each other. The people who used to be wise enough to realize that if it could happen to others, it could happen to them too.
This shouldn't happen to atheists any more than it should happen to Christians.
Nope, this one won't be in 3-D. But it's still going to look pretty darned awesome, no doubt about it.
Dark Horizons is the first to report that award-winning actor Jim Broadbent has been cast to play Horace Slughorn in the upcoming film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (and no doubt this means we'll be seeing him again in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as well).If you haven't read the books, Horace Slughorn is a fairly major character in the sixth book. Slughorn is a former professor of Hogwarts who Professor Dumbledore persuades to come out of retirement and teach again at the school. Slughorn also has a knack for getting attached to students who he believes (and often rightly so) will go on to excel. So naturally, Slughorn appreciates Harry's already-celebrity status.
Broadbent will also be seen this coming spring in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
If you would like to read the Constitution (and you really should), here is the full text - including subsequent amendments - hosted by the National Constitution Center.
Jordan was the author of the rather popular Wheel of Time series. He had finished the eleventh book in 2005 and he was working on the twelfth and final book when he passed away. I only read the first volume, The Eye of the World, and that was about 12 years ago but I remember it being a pretty great read. I may have to check out the rest of the series now, especially since a number of people have commented on some rather Christian themes throughout the books.
Congratulations to Terry O'Quinn, who last night won his first-ever Emmy - that for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama - for his portrayal of John Locke on Lost!Lost actually had two entries in the Best Supporting Actor/Drama category tonight: the other was Michael Emerson, who plays Benjamin Linus.
If you ask me, all the Best Actor/Actress categories should have been filled with Lost people. That's the thing about an ensemble show with a cast that strong: practically everyone deserves to be there.
But O'Quinn richly deserves this win. Locke is one of the most fascinating characters in television history and there's not possibly anyone who could have done the the role better than Terry O'Quinn. The more Locke-centric episodes this past season - especially "The Man from Tallahassee" and "The Brig" - were some of the most intense in the show's history (heck, "The Man from Tallahassee" had this whole house screaming). And not just Lost either: O'Quinn has done some amazing work over the past decade and it's great to see him get acknowledged for his efforts.
As was reported here a few weeks later, the board wound up rescinding the earlier vote to implement the policy after POTSMOD (People Opposed To Standard Mode Of Dress) turned the meeting into a media spectacle with picketing by students, black armbands and not just a Jedi but an "escaped convict" too :-)
Well, I watched the video again and it got to the part where I was alluded to Mark that I had "something much more outrageous" in mind if the board continued to refuse to acknowledge us. What this was, I told Mark, would "drop jaws all over the place".
Fortunately, the board did hear us out. And we are thankful that they did and that they overturned their initial vote for the uniforms.
But I was not bluffing. There was something that I had planned to do if the board, at the July meeting, continued to deny our protests.
If the Jedi Costume didn't grab their attention, I was seriously intending to escalate this thing, big time.
The only people who've known about this before now were my wife Lisa, Samantha Fettig of POTSMOD, Richard Moore, "Weird" Ed Woody, and just a few others. They were all sworn to secrecy about it. They also, every single one of them, tried their darndest to talk me out of doing this.
But after studying it long and hard and figuring that (a) if it was in the public interest to do this then I'd have no problem with attempting it and (b) it would be an awesome experience if I survived, I was all the more bound and determined to be ready to do this.
So what was it?
If, after the July 9th meeting, we could not help but believe that the Rockingham County Board of Education was not interested in our concerns about the school uniforms and why we did not want them, then I was going to pick a date and send out a whole wazoo-load of press releases, telling every TV and radio station, newspaper, blogger and whoever else came to mind to be at a certain spot at a certain time.
When the press was all situated, I was going to come out wearing one of those flame-proof suits that cover you from head to toe, set myself on fire, and with the cameras rolling stand there with a sign saying "SCHOOL UNIFORMS BURN ME UP!"
The effect was hopefully going to be like what you see in the photo on the right.
The plan was for me to stand there for several seconds all lit up holding the sign, long enough for everyone to get good footage and pics, and then have volunteers with fire extinguishers douse out the flames.
So intent on going through with this was I, that the announcement of my plan for it was written into the first draft of my speech before the board. Luckily a cooler head (bad pun I know) prevailed and the "threat" didn't make it into the second version of the remarks. But I can only imagine what the look of horror on the faces of all those board members might have been, had I gone through with publicizing it that night...
...and especially what the reactions from a certain few of the members would have been. You see, they're the ones who know me. We've been friends for many, many years. And they would be the first to tell you that they KNOW that I am outrageous enough to try something like this! Emphasis on "try": they're well aware that I would take a stab at it even if success wasn't guaranteed. If the stunt might be glorious and spectacular, that's all I need to know to want to attempt it. Although so far as physical danger goes, this would have been one of the more daring things that I'd have ever considered.
Would I have really done this? For my brothers and sisters in POTSMOD and for the kids at Reidsville Middle and Reidsville High schools, you bet that I would have.
Thankfully (and I really can't stress that nearly enough), things didn't get to that point at all. The board voted 7-3 at the July meeting to overturn the uniforms policy at the two schools. So ever since classes started a few weeks ago the middle and high school students in Reidsville get to wear whatever they want, so long as it adheres to the reasonable dress code.
But for a few weeks there, in the summer of 2007, Rockingham County was almost the site of its very own version of the Burning Man tour.
Look, it could have been worse. At least I didn't have The Wicker Man in mind when I hatched this crazy plot...
Suffice it to say, one of the things that has happened as a result of all this is that I'm now much more interested in digital copyright matters than I was before.
So this article on Slashdot caught my eye: a pro-atheist group called the Rational Response Squad has had its YouTube account terminated after an organization called Creation Science Evangelism Ministries allegedly flooded YouTube with "false DMCA copyright requests". The termination apparently came after the Rational Response Squad tried to contest the copyright claims (I'm assuming this means that the Rational Response Squad filed DMCA counterclaims as I did in my situation).
I definitely don't agree with the Rational Response Squad and what they stand for. And there's probably not much at all that these people would ever appreciate about my being a believer in God and a follower of Christ (albeit a very imperfect one).
All the same, if these allegations are true then a dire injustice is being done to the Rational Response Squad by way of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And YouTube has a lot of explaining to do.
And if Creation Science Evangelism Ministries is indeed attacking its critics with fraudulent claims like this, then the people behind it are showing a very poor example of Christ-like character. And they should be called out for that. But right now I'm more concerned about what is happening with YouTube and the DMCA.
I can almost understand what happened with YouTube so far as my incident went. They were put between the proverbial "rock and a hard place". And under the DMCA once a copyright claim was received, they had to act accordingly. They acted wrong, but in looking back and knowing more about it than I did before, I don't see how YouTube had any choice under the law but to remove it... at least until I filed the DMCA counterclaim.
But this situation with Rational Response Squad and Creation Science Evangelism Ministries is, in many ways, far worse than mine was. The thing with my video was at best, I like to think anyway, ignorance. The actions against the Rational Response Squad could - it might be argued in a court of law - be criminal.
However what is really troubling is that, if the report that Slashdot posted is true, then YouTube has terminated the Rational Response Squad's account without a complete and considerate investigation of the matter. And maybe I'm thinking on a way wrong level here when I say this but after reading what is supposedly happening with the Rational Response Squad, it's enough to make me wonder what might have happened to my own account when I filed the counterclaim against Viacom's move against my own YouTube video. Without the considerable press that my situation generated, would YouTube have been just as keen to not have my account be terminated?
You would think that YouTube would give every claim and counterclaim the seriousness that each deserves, even knowing that many of them are no doubt going to be frivolous. That's to be expected of any enterprise that's put itself in the public position that YouTube has done. But to possibly not only fail to investigate such inane claims but also acquiesce to them goes so far beyond negligence, that I also cannot but believe that these actions would be criminal in nature also.
As I said before: as a Christian, I don't agree with what the Rational Response Squad stands for. But if what they are saying is true and they are indeed being quashed on YouTube by Creation Science Evangelism Ministries, then I'll give the Rational Response Squad my full support in this matter.
I'll close this post out with an observation using my personal "worst possible epithet for anything". This situation, along with my own and numerous others, proves one thing: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act sucks donkeys balls to no end.
I couldn't resist. This was screaming for a Photoshop job.
Instead of the 2001 remake with George Clooney and pals, I went with the original 1960 movie with Frank Sinatra and the "Rat Pack", which I saw a long time ago and always liked.
So here it is: "O.J.'s 11" (or "O.J.'s Eleven" however you want to spell it out)...
The thing is that even at life-size, Yoda takes up considerable space. Lisa and I didn't really know what to do with him. But then an idea came to us. Or to be more accurate, the notion came to mind to "adapt" Brian's original idea...
Let's put Yoda in Lisa's music classroom at school! That way Yoda would have space, would be used to promote music and would get to be enjoyed by lots of people, especially young children.
And that's what we did. Well, that's where it started anyway. Because Lisa said that other teachers usually have a "motif" going on in their room about something they enjoy (like some teachers have their rooms decked out with their favorite NASCAR racers). So we thought that we'd put some of that collection of mine to good use and give her classroom a Star Wars theme.
We put the finishing touches on it this week. And it's already proving to be a huge hit with the kids! And with the faculty and staff too (and word has it that it might have even been oggled by a few school board members).
So here ya go: Mrs. Lisa Knight's "Star Wars"-themed music classroom at Monroeton Elementary School in Reidsville, North Carolina...
Even before entering the classroom, you'll find a hint of the magic and myth and music within.
Immediately to the side of the door as you enter the room, there's this board with Yoda's instruction that "Learn music, we will!"
It's a pretty spacious classroom, as this next picture indicates. Monroeton Elementary also serves as one of the election precincts and whenever elections are held, Lisa's classroom is where they set up the voting booths! So I have to wonder if we had put all of this stuff in her room last year, would it have helped or hurt my chances at getting elected to school board, considering that TV commercial that I'd ran?
The commanding centerpiece of the room (after the teacher, hopefully), Yoda!
There hasn't been a day that's gone by so far this year that Lisa hasn't told me about how delighted the kids are with him. Yoda has become a very welcoming and friendly presence for the children. And I've heard a number of especially great stories about how it seems some kids - who might otherwise feel shy or withdrawn or somehow intimidated by being in school for the first time in their lives - really "open up" with Yoda around. This is something that the kids, heck everyone can relate to in a positive way. Which I think is the very purpose of mythology to begin with. It's awesome to be able to actually apply that in such a direct (and fun) fashion!
Here's another pic of Yoda, showing more of his size and the "Music: The Force That Binds Us All Together" sign.
In case anyone's wondering, I removed the blade from Yoda's lightsaber for sake of safety. We'd thought of putting a conducting baton in the saber hilt and make Yoda look like he was leading an orchestra, but that might not be completely safe, either. In the end, we decided he looks good and inspirational just as he is even without it.
On the far wall from the door, there is a series of portraits depicting "Great Musicians of the Star Wars Saga". The first is of The Max Rebo Band from Return of the Jedi:
Followed by Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes from A New Hope:
And finally, Augie's Great Municipal Band from The Phantom Menace:
Here's Artoo Detoo! Actually it's an Artoo-Detoo cooler:
'Course you can't have Artoo without Threepio being around somewhere to complain about things (even if he's just an action figure case):
After Yoda, the biggest "celebrity" in the room is this almost-life-sized cardboard stand-up of Chewbacca. Considering that Chewie is (a) a Wookiee (b) fiercely loyal (c) enormously strong (d) eager to rip arms out of the sockets of people that he doesn't like and (e) in possession of the only gun on public school premises, I think it's pretty safe to assume that this is the safest classroom in Rockingham County!
Here's one of the bookshelves, filled with music books. On top of the shelf there are Star Wars picture books that during the occasional free period the students are welcome to look through and enjoy. The students are not welcome to put on the Darth Vader mask: have you any idea how uncomfortable that thing is? No wonder Vader is so cranky all the time! But they still think it's a pretty neat thing to behold.
Knowing that the younger children would really dig these, we've got two of the Star Wars Mr. Potato Heads on display (seen here guarding a metronome).
And now, something that I wish we didn't have to show you, but even here there was a bit of fun to be had. It's a reality of life that part of a healthy childhood is coming to understand the concept of self-discipline. And it's very necessary for a teacher to promote and maintain that discipline in his or her classroom. Hence the system that Lisa has chosen to use in her classroom: a discipline board. Except that this is no mere "discipline board"...
You've heard of a Dark Lord of the Sith? Well that's nothing compared to the abject terror brought on by The Dark BOARD of the Sith!
I know: this is probably the only elementary classroom in America that instead of pictures of George Washington and Abe Lincoln on the walls, there's pictures of Darth Sidious and Darth Vader. Just like it's a sure bet that this is the only music classroom anywhere that has Figrin D'an and Max Rebo rather than Mozart and Beethoven. Maybe we'll get lucky and score a special guest visit from John Williams at Monroeton :-)
And as you are leaving class, there is this traditional tiding of good fortune as you go on your way...
So ends the "virtual tour" of the music classroom at Monroeton Elementary. I gotta say, it's a terrific feeling knowing that more than it being just fun eye-candy, but that the kids seem to really be moved to engage themselves in learning by all of this Star Wars imagery around them.
And in case you are wondering: No, Lisa does not refer to her students as "younglings"! Not yet anyway :-)
Words fail to describe how heartbroken I'm feeling right now at hearing this news.
When I was in elementary school, there was this "book club" thing that our teachers always took part in: we'd get these circulars from the club and go over them with our parents and they'd send us to school with the form and checks for payment and a week or so later we'd get our stuff at school. 'Twas a lot of fun actually. Well when I was ten and in fourth grade we got that month's circular and one of the books was A Wrinkle In Time. One of my best friends told me it was an "awesome book" and so I got Mom to order it.
That was 23 years ago. And you know what? I've still got that same copy of A Wrinkle In Time sitting on my bookshelf. Wherever I've gone over the years, whether off to college or to live and work in Asheville or in our home as a married man, A Wrinkle In Time has gone with me. It's amazing that it's still in as good a condition as it is, given how many times I've read this copy.
And then when Lisa and I started dating, on the very first trip that she took with me to my hometown of Reidsville to meet my parents, we were in Barnes & Noble in Greensboro one night before going to see a movie and I bought her a copy of A Wrinkle In Time, too. 'Twas the first book that I ever gave her. She loved it too.
Suffice it to say, there are few books that ever impacted me more than did L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time.
You know what was so wonderful about that book to me? Because reading it as a ten-year old kid, it opened my eyes to something that I had never been aware of before: that the realm of science and that of faith are not only not incompatible, but they are one and the same. And in one way or another, that has been one of the bigger revelations that has dominated and guided my life in the long years since.
I never got to meet Madeleine L'Engle, but I do know some people who were fortunate enough to not only meet but talk with her at length. One of my friends said that she was "amazing". Another said that she had "grace and a powerful light behind her eyes".
And now she is gone from us.
But in her own way, maybe more than she ever knew, Madeleine L'Engle became just as legendary a warrior against the darkness as those who were mentioned in A Wrinkle In Time.
Mrs. L'Engle, thank you for everything that you gave us. And we hope that you are enjoying the thrill, at long last, of a real tesseract.
A little after 9 p.m. tonight I received the following e-mail from YouTube:
Dear Kwerky,And sure enough, the clip is back up.In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we've completed
processing your counter-notification dated x/xx/xx regarding your videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddyVQwpByug
This content has been restored and your account will not be penalized.
Sincerely,
Harry
The YouTube Team
Very special thanks to Fred von Lohmann and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for their terrific assistance in this matter! Folks, I cannot begin to describe how impressed I have become with the Electronic Frontier Foundation because of this. Theirs has been the kind of service that is so rare to witness nowadays that when you do see it, it practically comes as a shock. There's no telling how much grief and headache that Fred and his crew have prevented not just for me, but for a lot of other people also. And if you find that you are capable of doing so, I would really like to suggest making a contribution to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is one organization that really does merit a tremendous amount of respect for the work that it does.
There is more that I'm feeling led to say about this, but that'll have to wait to be appended to this post or on a new one tomorrow. But I wanted to go ahead and let it be known that the situation is now, apparently and very thankfully, resolved.
EDIT 9:33 a.m. EST:
There is something that I feel compelled to say now that this situation is apparently resolved for good. Something that I've been yearning to scream almost since this whole thing started...
At no point have I ever seen this, or even desired to see this, as a "get Viacom" thing. And I seriously regret that some people saw this incident as an opportunity to lash out at that company for sake of spite or profit or whatever.
Doubt it not: there's been a huge amount of frustration on this end for the past two weeks. But it's been such great irony that I've had to laugh about it too.
I've got nothing against Viacom. And I wish that nobody else would have anything against Viacom, either. Life's way too short to spend even a moment of it wanting to hurt others.
Believe me, I know from firsthand experience: bitterness will only reap regret.
Big companies are made up of people, too. Yeah, I know that a lot of big companies have screwed plenty of things up. But that's only because collective might magnifies the flaws that are already in every human being on the planet. And despite that apparent strength in numbers, you have to make yourself realize that it's not some corporate leviathan that you're in disagreement with, but the people within it... and it's altogether possible that you and they are more alike than you realize.
Ya see, we've made it all too easy to hate "them". It’s a hard thing to hate an individual person. But make that person a Viacom executive, or a Democrat or Republican, or a Protestant or Catholic, or a Muslim or Jew, or whatever, by de-humanizing them and sticking them behind some mass façade... and it becomes not just easy to hate them but it's practically expected that we try to destroy them!
I don't hate Viacom, no matter what's happened in the past few weeks. And I hope that nobody else does either, for this or for any other reason. So if you do, please stop.
Man has spent six thousand years struggling with law and how to comprehend it. We still haven't got it down pat. And then things like the Internet and digital media come and muck it up even more. I sincerely believe that's what happened here: Viacom and I converged on untrotted soil, in a way that to the best of my knowledge had never happened before. Fortunately, we got out (and once again I would like to thank Fred von Lohmann and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for their assistance with this situation).
In a way, I'm sort of glad that this happened. Just as I'm glad that I ran for school board even though I didn't win a seat. This Viacom/YouTube deal is something that I learned a lot from, and came out a better person for it. It's made me much more aware of things like copyright law and the DMCA (and the myriad of problems with that legislation). I think it's safe to say that from this incident I learned quite a lot about my personal strengths and weaknesses. It was a growth event.
And along the way, I got to meet and come to know a lot of good people.
Even the bad... or just the plain crazy... things that happen to you in life, you can find something good to take from them. If you want that.
It doesn't look like this is going to wind up in any kind of litigation, and for that I am thankful. If I can die someday without having sued or been sued, then I will die happy. This ends just as I had hoped it would: with the clip back up and, I like to think, with Viacom and me getting to shake hands and move on and wishing each other well. I'll certainly harbor no hard feelings toward Viacom for the past two weeks.
And I hope that Viacom doesn't think that this means that I want them to stop using my commercial on VH1. I just want to be able to let not only my friends see it but my children and grandchildren someday, which might be after the Web Junk 2.0 site has gone defunct.
Sometime in the next few days I'm going to "collect" the various news stories that appeared online about this thing and post them here, if nothing else than for my own convenience. But also for future reference in case anybody else wants to study what happened with this issue (including arguments that were made against my case... and there were plenty). Along with some other pertinent documentation, such as the DMCA counter-notification claim that I filed, which I would welcome others to study and scrutinize and if they feel so led, to criticize (hey, it was my first one :-).
She would have been a legend even if she was never immortalized by Doc Brown's words to Marty in Back to the Future: "I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady!"
Seriously though, she was a solid actress right up through her years on Falcon Crest. Was it more than coincidence that Wyman started doing that role right when ex-husband Ronnie began to be President? I've always wondered about that. But her Angela Channing character was the perfect follow-up to J.R. Ewing and Dallas on Friday nights in the Eighties. For that alone, she earns honoring here.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Hmmmmm... I don't like it. Sounds way too long and positively hokey. If the title is referring to this crystal skull, then I'm kind of disappointed 'cuz there's much better artifacts out there waiting to be MacGuffins for a good Indiana Jones story. The "crystal skulls" thing to me always seemed on the same level of wacky as Chariots of the Gods? or the Lost Continent of Mu. In this final(?) movie installment, why couldn't Indy be sent looking for the Lance of Longinus or the Tooth of Buddha or the Mormon Plates or the Cloak of Muhammad?
But then, these are just the thoughts of a guy who's always said that Indiana Jones and the Sons of Darkness was a pretty good read... so what do I know? :-P
EDIT 7:22 a.m. EST: Okay now that the initial shock has passed I must admit: I kind of like this title. Why? Because it occurred to me during the night that when Spielberg and Lucas set out to make Raiders of the Lost Ark all those years ago, they intended that movie to be a homage to those classic serials that they and all the other kids of their generation used to flock to the local theater to see on Saturday afternoons. And those flicks usually had pretty outrageous titles, like Drums of Fu Manchu and Secret Service in Darkest Africa. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sounds like it's got that same kind of vibe, just with "Indiana Jones" tacked onto it. I know: this is basically the identical argument that Lucas used to sell us The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones... but those wound up working well. So by the same merit, I'll have to say that I'm starting to dig Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
The first was one that I'd heard of for awhile but had never seen before: Heavenly Creatures, which came courtesy of Netflix. This 1994 movie stars Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet (in her first-ever film role) as Pauline Rieper and Juliet Hulme, the central figures in the Parker-Hulme murder case that rocked New Zealand in 1954. It's a fairly disturbing movie, but quite a fascinating one as well. I wound up spending a good part of the night after the movie reading about the real-life events involving these two young friends and how it went so bizarrely, totally wrong. But I don't know how long it could be before I could watch Heavenly Creatures again. This is a movie rife with those kinds of things that once you see, you can't "unsee" if you know what I mean.
And then this afternoon Lisa and I watched The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Has it really been almost six years since this movie came out? Hard to believe. Well, for whatever reason we watched it and for that I am glad because it left me feeling refreshed and inspired again. That line that Gandalf says at one point: "All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you", is so true. We don't have to believe that we can fight and win all of the battles. And we shouldn't even try to believe it, either. We just have to deal with what God has set before us, as best we can and knowing that whatever happens it does serve His will, even if we can't understand how it can do that from where we are.
Maybe tomorrow I'll put on The Frighteners and make it three Peter Jackson movies in a row :-)
Generally intelligence has no effect on conclusions, which are glandularly determined. It just rationalizes hormonal inevitabilities.I've been wondering quite a bit lately: how is it that with supposedly all of these "smart" people that we think are running things in this country, we are still screwing things up... like in Iraq? Reed hits on it here: that these people have let intelligence come in the way of their sense of compassion and consideration. Or as I thought after reading his piece, they have enormous intelligence but woefully lack wisdom.Further, there's no point in knowledge, except to show off with in sports bars. If you are in Willie's Rib Pit to watch boxing and know about the Long Count (in the Cribb-Molineaux fight), then you amount to something. You do no harm, anyway. All other knowledge is suspect. At best, it is a minor vice, like crossword puzzles. At worst, it encourages people to do catastrophic things with a smug sense of fundamental rightness. The people who got America into Iraq were no end bright and could say impressive things like "Twenty-Seventh Caliphate" and "Theravada Sufism." Much good it did them. Or us.
Brains just allow you to be more elaborately and ornately disastrously wrong.
Personally, I'd rather have wisdom than intelligence. What say ye?
